Years of Grace

by Margaret Ayer Barnes

  Jane was roused from revery by Isabel's sudden movement, by her mother's sharp, stifled exclamation. She stared at her father's face. The mouth had dropped slightly more open. The chest was motionless. The slow raucous gasps were silenced. The bombardment had ceased.

  'Dr. Bancroft! Dr. Bancroft!' cried Isabel shrilly. The doctor appeared instantly in the dressing-room door. He moved quickly to the bedside. Miss Coulter followed him. He took her father's hand and felt the wrist for a moment in silence. He looked at Mrs. Ward. Robin and Stephen had

  crossed the room. They stood staring down at Mr. Ward from the foot of the bed. Her mother was crying. Isabel's arm was around her. They, too, were staring down at Mr. Ward.

  Her father was dead, thought Jane dully. Her father had died, as she sat at his bedside thinking abstract thoughts of life — of her own personal problems. How could she have thought such thoughts at such a moment? Lost in the complications presented by her own drama, she had not seen the curtain fall on the last act of her father's Hfe. She had not sensed the final approach of death. She had been totally unaware of that last, fearfully awaited gasp.

  Her mother had risen. Isabel's arm was still around her. Stephen's hand was on Jane's shoulder. She rose slowly from her chair, staring down at the white, pinched face that lay Hpon the pillow — the face that was not her father's.

  'Come, dear,' said Stephen tenderly. At the sound of his vcttce Jane felt her eyes fill suddenly with tears. Her father was dead. Stephen's hand was on her elbow. His touch grew firm and insistent.

  'Come, dear,' he said again. He led her to the door. Robin and Isabel were already there. Her mother was weeping in their arms.

  'Come, dear,' Robin was sa>dng. Her father was dead, and tJacy were all running away from him. In response to some strange, instinctive recoil, lile was retreating from death. They were leaving him to Dr. Bancroft and Miss Coulter.

  'I — I want to stay!' cried Jane a little wildly.

  'No, dear,' said Stephen protectively, 'come.' Somehow, Jane found herself in the darkened hall. Her mother wzis at her elbow.

  'Come, Mamma, dear,' Isabel was saying.

  'He's — dead,' said Mrs. Ward dully.

  *Comc, dear,* said Isabel insistently, through her tears.

  'I've — no one — now/ said Mrs. Ward slowly.

  Jane suddenly realized that Minnie had joined them. Her face was distorted with weeping.

  'You've got me,' said Minnie. Competently she drew Mrs. Ward from Isabel's restraining arm. 'You come and lie down in the guest-room,'she said. Mrs. Ward permitted herself to be led away. Jane, in the darkened corridor, looked blankly, tearlessly, at Stephen, Isabel, and Robin. Her father was dead.

  IV

  Jane sat in the sunny comer of Cicily's room in the Lying-in Hospital, holding the week-old twins in her arms. How ridiculous, how adorable of them to be twins, she was thinking, £LS she gazed down at their absurdly red, absurdly wrinkled, absurdly tiny faces. Little John Ward and little Jane Ward Bridges! John and Jane — Cicily's son and daughter!

  Jane had wondered, a trifle anxiously, if she would experience a pang at the sight of a grandchild—if grandmother-hood had birth pangs of its own. But no — she had produced her grand-twins, vicariously to be sure, without any spiritual travail. She loved being a grandmother. She loved little Jane, and especially little John Ward Bridges, little John Ward, who had come into the world to take up life and his name, just six weeks after his great-grandfather had left it. Life had gone on.

  Jane wished, terribly, that her father might have Uved to see this great-grandson. He so nearly had. Things happened so quickly as you grew older. Jane felt she had barely recovered from those three dreadful days when her father's life was hanging in the balance, from the shock of his death, from the pity and sorrow of the readjustment of her mother's life.

  when the hour arrived, at two o'clock one March morning, when, stealing out of bed and leaving a note for Stephen on her pincushion, she had rushed with Cicily in the motor jfrom the Lakewood house to the Lying-in Hospital, v/here she had sat in a waiting-room, a beautifully furnished, green-walled waiting-room that looked exactly like the bleak parlour of an exceptionally good hotel, for six, eight, ten hours, waiting for Cicily's twins to come into the world.

  Cicily had been born in the house on Pine Street. Jenny and Steve in the blue bedroom at Lakewood. Jane did not entirely hold with hospitals as a stage set for birth. In spite of surgeon's plaster labels stuck on newborn shoulder blades, in spite of scientific footprints taken in birth-rooms, Jane had been terribly afraid that the twins would be mixed up with some one else's babies. Cicily had laughed at her.

  Cicily had laughed at her, consistently, throughout the whole terrible ordeal of birth. Laughed at her as they stole from the Lakewood house with the elaborate precaution not to waken Stephen. Laughed at her in the motor in that hurried drive through the nocturnal boulevards, laughed at the sight of that beautifiilly furnished waiting-room, laughed even between ether gasps in her breathless struggle, the last few minutes before the twins had arrived. Laughed most of all, in the tranquillity of her narrow, ordered bed, as she lay with the newborn babies in her arms, and said, twinkling up at Jane's joyftil, reheved countenance:

  'Well, if this is the curse of Eve, I don't think so much of it! What have women been howling about down the ages? Why, it's nothing — it's really nothing — to go through for two babies!'

  Jane had stood astounded at her courage. Her courage and her common-sense — the two great virtues of the rising generation. Freedom fixjm sentimentality. Freedom from

  the old taboos that had shackled humanity for generations. Bravery and bravado — they would take the rising generation far.

  Cicily was lying, now, in the tranquillity of the ordered bed across tlie room from Jane. The room was a bower of flowers. Cicily was wearing a blue silk negUgee that Muriel had sent her. Her hps were pale, but her eyes were bright and her dandeHon head burned on the pillow like a yellow flame. She was holding a letter from Jack in her hands.

  Tm so happy, Mumsy,' she said. 'He'll be home in four weeks. Do you honestly think we can keep him from knowing it was twins until he gets here?'

  'I honestly do,' smiled Jane.

  *If Belle didn't write Albert. She swears she didn't.'

  *I don't beheve she did,' smiled Jane.

  'Poor Belle!' laughed Cicily. 'She's so envious of me — with everything over.'

  *It will be over for Belle next week,' smiled Jane.

  'But it won't be twins!' said Cicily proudly. 'Not if there's anything m the law of chances!'

  'It probably won't be twins,' smiled Jane.

  'I've put it over Belle,' laughed Cicily, 'all along the line. Jack's twice as nice as Albert and my baby's twice as many as hers!'

  'Nevertheless,' said Jane, 'I dare say Belle will continue to prefer her own husband and her own baby.'

  'I suppose she will,' said Cicily, 'but I prefer mine. Give them to me, Mumsy, before !Miss Billings comes in. It's almost time to nurse them.'

  V

  'Flora,' said Jane, 'they're the cutest things I ever sawl It was too dear of you to make them!'

  'The last hats,' smiled Flora, 'that I'll ever make. I sold the good-will of the shop to-day.'

  'And you're sailing Wednesday?' Jane passed the toast. She and Flora were having tea on the terrace. It was late in June. The first roses were beginning to bud. Flora had motored out for a farewell call. She had brought with her two little blue caps for the twins.

  'Wednesday,' said Flora. 'It nearly killed me, Jane, to close the house.'

  'I know it did,' said Jane.

  'I'm staying at the Blackstone,' said Flora. 'The storage company took the furniture yesterday. I've sold the house to such a funny man — his name's Ed Brown. He's a bill-board king. He's going to turn it into studios for his commercial artists.'

  'I don't see how you could do it,' said Jane.

  'I wanted to do it,' said Flora. 'I wanted to
keep myself from ever coming back. I would have, you know, as long as the house was there. And yet I was miserable in it. You don't know, Jane, how much I've missed Father.'

  'Oh, yes, I do,' said Jane.

  'At first, you know, I tried to keep busy with the hats and the war orphans. But I never saw the war orphans. And the hats —Jane, it was the hats that made me realize that I wat gro^ving old.'

  'But you're not old!' cried Jane. Her protest was quite honest. Flora's sHm, fashionable figure seemed to her as young as ever. Her face had lost the blank and weary expression it had worn for the first years after her father's death. In the sunlir^ht of the terrace, the faint sheen of silver seemed only a high hght on her red-gold hair.

  'I'm forty-three,' sighed Flora, 'and I know I look it. I've known it from the moment I realized that I didn't want to

  try on the hats any longer. At first I couldn't wait to get them out of the boxes when they came from the customs-house. I used to put them all on and preen myself in firont of the mirrors. But lately — lately, Jane — I didn't seem to want to. At first I just said to myself that the new styles were trying. But pretty soon I knew — I knew it was my face.'

  'Flora!' cried Jane, in horror. 'Don't be ridiculous! You're lovely looking. You always were!'

  'You don't understand, Jane,' said Flora accusingly. 'You don't care how you look. You never did.'

  'I did, too!' cried Jane. 'Of course, I know I never looked like much of anything '

  'But you're coming into your own, now, Jane,' said Flora, smiling. 'The fourth decade is your home field. You're going to spend the next ten years looking very happy and awfiilly amusing and pretty enough, while the beauties — the beauties fade and frizzle or grow red and blowsy, and finally rot—just rot and end up looking like exceptionally well-preserved corpses, fresh from the hand of a competent undertaker ' Flora's voice was really trembling. 'So — I'm

  going to Paris, Jane, where the undertakers are exceedingly competent and there's some real Ufe for middle-aged people. Here in Chicago what do I do but watch your children and Muriel's and Isabel's grow up and produce more children?

  It's terrible, Jane, it's really terrible ' Again she broke

  off. 'What are you and Isabel going to do with your mother?^

  'She's going on living in the old house with Minnie,' said Jane. 'Of course, it's dreadful there, now that the boulevard has gone through. Noisy and dirty and awfully commercial '

  'And the elms all cut down,' said Flora sympathetically, 'when they widened the street.'

  'But Mamma Hkes it,' said Jane. 'She likes the old house-

  And Isabel's near her. She comes out here for the week-ends. I don't know what she'll do when we go to Gull Rocks.'

  'You're going to Gull Rocks?' asked Flora.

  'We have to,' said Jane. 'We really hax^e to, Stephen's mother counts on it. And I've promised Cicily that she and Jack could have this house for the summer, while they're deciding what to do. Stephen's going to celebrate his fiftieth birthday by taking a two months' vacation.'

  'Why don't you go abroad?' asked Flora.

  'Stephen would rather sail that catboat,' smiled Jane.

  'Jane, you've been a saint about Gull Rocks all these years,* said Flora earnestly. 'I couldn't stand it for a week.'

  Yet Flora had stood Mr. Furness for twenty years, thought Jane. Stood that life, spent junketing about with a cribbage board in trains de luxel Stood those expensive hotels in London and Paris and Rome and Madrid and Carlsbad and Biarritz and Dinard and Benares and Tokio!

  'You've been the saint. Flora!' said Jane.

  As she spoke Molly appeared, pushing the double perambulator around the clump of evergreens at the toot of the garden. She paused beneath the apple tree, put on the brake, and sat down on the green bench. Molly was Cicily's impeccable English nursemaid. She was infallible with the twins and very firm with Cicily. She hked Jane, however.

  'Come and look at the babies,' said Jane.

  The twins, very plump and pink and as alike as two pins, were blinking up at the June sunhght through the boughs of the apple tree. Molly had risen respectfully at Jane's approach. She had beautiful British manners.

  'Aren't they funny?' said Flora. 'They look so clean. And somehow so — brand-new.'

  'They are brand-new,' said Jane proudly. She stroked John Wzird's velvety cheek with a proprietary finger. He responded

  immediately with a vague, toothless, infinitely touching smile and a spasmodic gesture of his small pink-sweatered arms.

  'Sometimes he has a dimple,' said Jane.

  'They're prettier than Belle's little girl,' said Flora. 'I hoped she was going to look Uke Muriel. But she doesn't.*

  'She looks like Belle,' said Jane. 'Belle was a homely baby.*

  'She's lovely now,' said Flora.

  *Oh, lovely,' said Jane.

  'Cicily's lovely^ too,' said Flora.

  'Yes,' said Jane.

  'And so young,' said Flora wistfully.

  'And so happy,' said Jane. 'They're both so happy since the boys came home.'

  Jane,' said Flora solemnly, as they turned to leave the garden, 'do you find that looking at the younger generation makes you think of your own Ufe?'

  'Yes,' said Jane, a bit uncertainly.

  'It makes me think of lost opportunities,' said Flora — 'chances that will never come again.' They strolled across the lawn for a moment in silence. Then Flora spoke once more, this time a trifle tremulously: 'Do you know, Jane, that I've never been happy — happy hke that, I mean — except for just the ten days that I was engaged to Inigo Fellowes.'

  'I'm afraid,' said Jane slowly, as they ascended the terrace steps, 'that no one's ever happy like that for very long.'

  'But for longer than ten days,' said Flora, still solemnly, 'and maybe more than once. Inigo's still very happy with his wife.'

  'I didn't know he had a wife,' said Jane.

  'Oh, yes,' said Flora. 'He's been married for twelve years. I met him in Paris during the war, you know. He'd lost a leg and was being shipped back to Australia. He lives there now. He showed me a picture of his two sons.'

  Jane wondered why Inigo had felt he had to do that. It seemed a bit unnecessary. Though Flora, no doubt, had been wonderful about them.

  'You've had such a — a normal life, Jane,' said Flora, as they ascended the terrace steps. *You've always been so happy with Stephen.'

  *Ycs,' said Jane evenly, 'Stephen's a darling.' 'And now you have the children — to amuse you always/ 'Children,' said Jane doubtfully, 'don't always amuse you.* 'Don't they?' said Flora. 'I should think they would.* *Well, they don't,' said Jane.

  She kissed Flora good-bye very tenderly in the front hall. She stood on the doorstep and watched her motor recede down the gravel path. The pcissing of Flora meant a great deal to Jane. She would miss her frightfully. Her oldest friend. Except Muriel, who was, of course, so much less — less friendly. Not a friend Hke Agnes, of course. But Agnes was in New York. And now Flora would be in Paris. She might never see her again. With Stephen feeUng the way he did about Gull Rocks, she might never go to Paris. Flora would meet Andr6 there. Flora would probably come to

  know Andr6 very well again

  The striking of the clock in the hall behind her recalled Jane to a sense of the present. Six o'clock. Jenny ought to be home on the five-j&fty. She was in town taking her College Entrance Board physics examination for Bryn Mawr. Jane was glad that she was going there. It had been hard to convince her that she should. Jenny cared very little for Bryn Mawr, but she cared even less for a social debut. It was with the single idea of postponing that distressing event that Jenny had embraced the thought of a college education. Jenny was a girl's girl, pure and simple. So unlike Cicily, who had always had a crowd of boys about the house But where

  was Cicily? She should be home that minute, nursing the twins. She was probably out on the golf Hnks. Stephen and Jack would be back from the bank on the five-fifty. Jane had tried in vain to impress o
n Cicily the elementary fact that she ought to be home before Jack every evening. To precede your husband to the conjugal hearth at nightfall had always seemed to Jane the primary obHgation of matrimony. But Cicily had said she should worry! Suddenly she whirled around the bushes at the entrance of the driveway in her little Ford roadster. Her hat was oflf and her yellow bob was blowing in the breeze.

  Just met Cousin Flora!' she called. She threw on her brakes. The Ford stopped in a whirl of gravel. Cicily sprang to the doorstep. 'Is Jack home?' she cried. 'Are the twins howUng?' She was unbuttoning her blouse as she rushed into the hall. Jane followed her.

  'Call Molly, will you, Mumsy? I've got to hurry! Gosh, Jack should be here! We're dining in town, you know, this evening!'

  Jane turned toward the living-room in quest of MoUy.

  'Cousin Flora told me about the bonnets!' called Cicily from the upper hall. 'Bring them up, will you? I'll look at them while I nurse the babies!'

  The impeccable Molly had heard the Ford. She met Jane at the terrace doors. She had a twin tucked under each arm.

  'I'm afraid Mrs. Bridges kept them waiting,' smiled Jane.

  'Well — you know how young mothers are, ma'am,' said Molly resignedly, and passed on through the Hving-room and up the stairs.

  Jane was not sure she did know, half as well as MoUy did. She closed the terrace doors to keep out the mosquitoes. Molly always left them open. Young mothers were rather perplexing to Jane. Cicily never worried about those babies

  and never watched over them. She left them entirely to Molly's care. Molly did the watching and Jane did the worrying. Last week, for instance, when the supplementary bottle had not seemed to agree with little Jane, Molly had watched over formulas for hours and Jane had lain awake worrying for two whole nights. But Cicily had not been ruffled.

  'It's up to the doctor, Mumsy,' she said. 'Babies always have their ups and downs. I can't invent a formula.'